• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Herrick 1 Aidan Herrick Matthew Lasar History 190U December 18, 2014 Rock, Race, and Payola: The FBI and The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” In the spring of 1964, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched one of its most infamous cases. After receiving numerous reports on a potentially dangerous item that had circulated prolifically around the United States, FBI offices from California to Florida began launching their own investigations into this threat. Much like a virus, the FBI had seen this enemy before, but it took a new form every time it reappeared. Their foe? Rock n’ roll. The new strain? None other than “Louie Louie,” as performed by The Kingsmen. Though clearly a silly waste of time to modern audiences that are used to Top 40 songs that border on pornographic, in 1964 Louie Louie and music like it had a reputation for stirring up trouble. If the FBI could find anything obscene about it, such a discovery could launch another rock ‘n’ roll witch hunt like the one rock had experienced during the Payola scandal five years prior. If a dirty utterance were to be found, the FBI would have another feather in its cap, proving their self-proclaimed position as a moral bulwark against enemies of American virtue. Should a single piece of foul language be present anywhere in the two minute and forty-seven second recording, what more would be necessary to a white society scared of a black uprising to prove that all this “jungle music” was corrupting their kids? In a Rube Goldberg-esque political mess, the FBI opened this investigation not so much because of the song itself, but because of a general paranoid atmosphere in the United States about race, sex and rock. Herrick 2 The Players The Kingsmen came together in 1960 comprised of Jack Ely (rhythm guitar), Lynn Easton (drums), Mike Mitchell (lead guitar), Don Gallucci (keyboard), and Bob Nordby (bass). Their name originated from Lynn Easton’s mother reading a story in the paper about a local group also called The Kingsmen that had just broken up.1 A high school band, all of its members had come together to make money as much as to play music. As Ely recalled it, “we’d play at promotions for a pancake mix or a biscuit mix, for mayonnaise… we’d play whatever.”2 Their early years were limited, weighed down both by homework, no independent means of transporting equipment, and parental control over which gigs they took.3 As a result, they started to become known for taking odd gigs, such as the opening of grocery stores.4 Beyond Ely’s great admiration for Elvis Presley, The Kingsmen were in the music business for cash, not causes.5 By some means, the band met Ken Chase, the program director for KISN Portland. Chase also owned a teen rock hop, cleverly called The Chase, and he offered them a gig there as a resident house band in 1961. The Kingsmen accepted readily. The Chase was a teen club that offered rock ‘n’ roll and imitation drinks, so The Kingsmen felt right at home, as they were only teens themselves.6 After realizing they could pack the place, the band decided to take it to the next level and pressed Chase to help them record.7 They wanted professional help, having already recorded an admittedly terrible rendition of “Peter Gunn Rock” by themselves the year before. They already knew which song they wanted to play. In April of 1963, they spent one Friday night gig at The Chase playing a 90 minute set of nothing but what they hoped would be their big hit; the soon-to-be infamous Louie Louie.8 Herrick 3 Originally recorded by Richard Berry in 1956 and popularized in the region by Rockin’ Robin Roberts, Louie Louie had become something of a local anthem in the Pacific Northwest.9 Bands covered it extensively, and it was a staple of the live shows of popular acts.10 The Kingsmen were no exception. Incidentally, The Kingsmen and Paul Revere and the Raiders would record their renditions the same week in the same studio,11 the Raiders having chosen the song after hearing The Kingsmen perform it at a club called The Coaster.12 The Kingsmen entered the studio the morning after their marathon performance, Chase having insisted that they were ready. Debate rages still over the recording’s technical aspects, and different Kingsmen offer different stories. Ely argues that the studio was the best studio in the area,13 though being the best is not a guarantee of quality equipment.14 The microphone hung suspended on a boom, and tauntingly refused to go low enough to rest comfortably in front of Ely’s mouth. Ely’s vocal chords were raw from the experiment in endurance they’d weathered the night before, and he had to tilt his head back to even sing directly at the mic. Mitchell’s solo fell apart like he had never played it before. By the end, the band was grateful the practice take was over, but learned to their surprise that Chase thought it was great. Chase bundled the warm-up take with the B-side “Haunted Castle,” the boys paid $50 for studio time, and that was that.15 Despite every reason for it not to, their rendition of Louie Louie shot up the charts. It played regularly on local stations for about two months, but like most northwest groups it failed to go national. Regardless, egos flared, and a battle for creative control ensued. The point of contention had been Easton, who’d been demanding creative control on the basis that his mother still owned the right to the band name. He had been practicing sax, and wanted to be the Herrick 4 frontman, and told Ely to either get on drums or get out. Doing just that, Ely and Nordby walked out. Three months after recording one of the most popular rock songs of all time, the Louie Louie lineup of The Kingsmen unceremoniously ended.16 Then, in October, Louie Louie once again rocketed back onto the Top 40 stage. A popular DJ in Boston, Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg, featured the song on his show in a position of reverence. He played the single twice in a row as part of a regular segment on the worst song he had heard all week.17 After that, phone calls flooded WMEX Boston, with callers demanding to know more about Louie Louie. It began flying off the racks of record stores all over New England. After this resurgence, Louie Louie started getting picked up in the South and the Midwest. This pickup in sales put those soon-to-be infamous 45’s in the hands of children in Florida and Indiana whose parents would pen some very angry letters. The Investigation In early 1964, concerned parents began to get agitated. Rock was already questionable, but it had seemed like rock ‘n’ roll had finally crossed the moral threshold into filth. In school hallways, on the bus, and on playgrounds, children had begun circulating copies of the lyrics to Louie Louie, complete with lurid words and obscene phrases. Parents, school employees, and members of churches took to writing letters, lyrics enclosed, and began firing them off to whichever government power they felt most appropriate to handle it. Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a tradition of investigating perceived threats, legality be damned, there was an actual legal basis for looking into Louie Louie. The passage of the Comstock Act in 1873 illegalized the transportation of obscene material through the United States postal system, as well as any information regarding such materials.18 Herrick 5 Empowered as an interstate police force by the Mann Act of 1910, the Bureau of Investigation (it would not be organized as the FBI until 192419) made it its business to deal with obscene material,20 known on FBI documents as ITOM (Interstate Transportation of Obscene Material). When sending obscene evidence between offices, the FBI shipped all potentially obscene materials in thick paper envelopes with clear OBSCENE stamps, lest the FBI inadvertently become guilty of the very crime they were investigating.21 Copies of “real” lyrics containing lines such as “at night at 10, I lay her again”22 and “hey yes bitch, hey lovemaker now bald my bone,”23 could very much have qualified as obscene in 1960’s America. On this legal basis, the FBI investigated Louie Louie to clear or condemn it for obscenity. Before the FBI began its investigation in 1964, Louie Louie had already been investigated by the Federal Communications Commission, the Justice Department, and the Post Office.24 The first investigation was prompted by a letter from Indiana containing a copy of the “real” lyrics, addressed to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, on February 4, 1964. Three days later, it was the FBI’s problem.25 The Indianapolis field office interviewed the redacted letter- writer’s daughter six weeks later, she having been the one who purchased the record. She informed the agents that obscene words were audible if the 45 RPM disk were played at 33 1/3 speed. Lester Irvin, the Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) for Indiana, advised that it may legally be obscene,26 and therefore illegal to send through the mail.27 Matthew Welch, the governor of Indiana, had already unofficially banned the song from airplay in the state about two weeks before the FBI received the letter,28 though he was never approached or contacted by the FBI for this action.29 An Indianapolis prosecutor argued that it didn’t even matter if the song contained obscene lyrics: the whole song, from the style to the recording quality, was “an abomination.”30 Herrick 6 Meanwhile, on February 10, the FBI office in Tampa received a similar letter and lyrics from a school official in Sarasota, Florida.

Load more

  19

Copy Link